The Prince of Lies is sad.
So sad that I wrote a song about it, ha ha.
Here it is :
Maybe I keep writing songs like these because some very deep level of 1970’s singer-songwriter programming emerges when I go to write lyrics.
And I mean, I feel like with every song, I skate a little closer to writing the next, “Puff The Magic Dragon”, or worse, “The Unicorn Song”.
God do I hate that song.
This time, I tried to do what I did with the previous song and kind of force it to be heavy metal, in this case, orchestral metal.
But those versions of the song turned out terrible, so, orchestral FOLK it is.
And I know this bizarre identity crisis where the heavy metal, punk, and industrial music is in conflict with the sad, sweet folks I keep writing, is pretty silly. I should just go with my muse and discover my true voice and all that good stuff.
But I can’t escape the fact that the kind of music I’m writing is not the kind of music I like. Like a lot of Gen X kids, I have a deep down aversion to folk music that kicks in whenever I hear softly strummed acoustic guitar and gentle singing.
Like with poetry, it’s not that none of it is good, it’s that the bad stuff hurts so much.
So if I didn’t know who made it and I heard one of my wimpy folk songs played on the radio, I would roll my eyes and mutter, “Oh, GREAT, this should be good. ” sarcastically.
But the thing is, I’m not in an angry heavy metal mood today, or lately. I am in a contemplative, introspective mood where I feel like I have stripped away some of my false self in favor of the real and much crankier me that lurks underneath.
That’s one of the things I have to grapple with : the real me might be way more of a prick than the person I’m accustomed to being.
So it’s anger yet again. Every time I try to imagine a more “authentic” version of myself, all I can see is an angry, sarcastic, short-tempered dude who goes around like Lou Grant, scowling at the world full of people who are so goddamn stupid.
And who knows. Maybe that version of me would be a temporary thing that exists only until I vent enough of my latent rage to cool back down and be normal.
But maybe not, and that’s a risk I am not prepared to take. It would inevitably lead to me hurting a lot of people very deeply with my acerbic wit and uncanny perceptions, and that’s too high a price to pay for my own personal growth.
I mean, I’m not some Boomer who thinks the most important thing in the world is their precious selves and that anyone, like say a wife and kids, who gets in the way of their own personal journey is just going to have to suck it up.
Which brings me back to my fantasies of just disappearing to somewhere where nobody knows me so I can start over from scratch and build a version of myself that is functional in the real world.
Wouldn’t that be something. Me, in the real world, with a job and a boyfriend.
That’s my big dream : bare functionality. The sort of thing most of the world takes for granted once they have been through their period of fire with their first job ever.
I’m still waiting on that. Working for my uncle Sonny at his shop was great. I think my winning personality made me a good fit for the job of cashier/clerk. I liked the customers and they liked me. It worked out pretty good.
So I know that I can do that kind of work, physical disability aside.
In fact if it weren’t for my bum legs I could do all kinds of jobs. I know damned well that I could be a really good employee somewhere.
It’s the getting of the job that confounds me.
And so I am here.
More after the break.
Is that really it?
I dunno. Maybe not.
I don’t think I am afraid of actually doing a job, but I might be afraid of having a job.
In that it would mean to committing to eight hours a day of sustained effort with no chance of retreating to my nice soft bed when I start to feel overwhelmed.
At the very least, there would be one hell of a nasty adjustment period as I got used to the idea of being “on” and in public for such extended periods.
And that’s not even counting lunch and commutes.
I definitely would have to change my badger ways. No more crouching immobile in the dark like some kind of cave lizard. I’d have to go into and stay in the light.
So maybe there aren’t as many jobs I could do as I thought. Maybe all these years of hermitage have done a lot of damage to my ability to function at a human level at all.
Luckily, I am a writer, and bar for human functioning for us is quite low. If we manage to deposit some text where it is supposed to go now and then, and if we’re lucky make the occasional public appearance where we’re clothed and manage not to say something that gets us canceled, people are willing to let everything else slide.
Of course, that means I really should be pouring more effort to actually getting paid to do this shit. This is also a job I know I can do – I am a highly prolific writer who can write whatever needs to be written as long as it’s not technical.
And the best part is that I can do it without even putting on pants.
And that leads us back to UpWork and me trying to get past their god damned fussy identification process again.
Wish me luck on that.
I will talk to you nice people agan tomorrow.